By Todd Bensman
HSToday
In March 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigators set their final dragnet at the Miami International Airport and waited to score a win in the war on terror. Soon enough, their longtime quarry, Iran Ul Haq, a Pakistani resident of Ecuador they’d been tracking across the globe for months, stepped off a plane from Quito and they slapped cuffs on him.
A secret, high-wire intercontinental undercover sting of a rare sort the American public knows nothing about was finally over.
Related: Preparing for the Next Terrorist Attack in America
For years, Ul Haq had run a profitable, globe-spanning human smuggling network out of Quito, transporting an endless backlog of fellow Pakistanis through Latin America to the US southwestern border. He charged them $60,000 each. Run by ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) with other countries from both the US attaché office in Quito and a local residence office in Atlanta, Georgia, The investigation had been complicated and expensive. It also was unique for another important reason; HSI agents were able to test a theory about long-distance human smuggling operators like Ul Haq. Was he willing to smuggle anyone into the US, even avowed terrorists?
To test this proposition, HSI agents directed three undercover informants posing as smuggling brokers to propose that Ul Haq transport one of several fictitious members of the notorious terrorist group Terik-e-Taliban, known as the Pakistan Taliban, across the US-Mexico border. The terrorist, it was explained, had been “blacklisted” by Pakistan and others like him were waiting in line for travel to America.
Ul Haq didn’t bat an eye. Of course he would do it, he responded, according to unsealed court documents. Ul Haq was recorded saying he could care less about what the terrorist would do once in the US – “hard labor, sweep floors, wash dishes in a hotel or blow up. That will be up to them.”
Read the full report at HSToday.
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